Gender Studies
An organizational approach to undoing gender: The unlikely case of offshore oil platforms
Robin Ely & Debra Meyerson
Research in Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This case study of two offshore oil platforms illustrates how an organizational initiative designed to enhance safety and effectiveness created a culture that unintentionally released men from societal imperatives for "manly" behavior, prompting them to let go of masculine-image concerns and to behave instead in counter-stereotypical ways. Rather than proving how tough, proficient, and cool-headed they were, as was typical of men in other dangerous workplaces, platform workers readily acknowledged their physical limitations, publicly admitted their mistakes, and openly attended to their own and others' feelings. Importantly, platform workers did not replace a conventional image of masculinity with an unconventional one and then set out to prove the new image - revealing mistakes strategically, for example, or competing in displays of sensitivity. Instead, the goal of proving one's masculine credentials, conventional or otherwise, appeared to no longer hold sway in men's workplace interactions. Building on West and Zimmerman's (1987: 129) now classic articulation of gender as "the product of social doings," we describe this organizationally induced behavior as "undoing" gender. We use this case, together with secondary case data drawn from 10 published field studies of men doing dangerous work, to induce a model of how organizational cultures equip men to "do" and "undo" gender at work.
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Trends in Global Gender Inequality
Shawn Dorius & Glenn Firebaugh
Social Forces, July 2010, Pages 1941-1968
Abstract:
This study investigates trends in gender inequality throughout the world. Using data encompassing a large majority of the world's population, we examine trends in recent decades for key indicators of gender inequality in education, mortality, political representation and economic activity. We find that gender inequality is declining in virtually all major domains, that the decline is occurring across diverse religious and cultural traditions, and that population growth is slowing the decline because populations are growing faster in countries where there is the greatest gender inequality.
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Karina Schumann & Michael Ross
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite wide acceptance of the stereotype that women apologize more readily than men, there is little systematic evidence to support this stereotype or its supposed bases (e.g., men's fragile egos). We designed two studies to examine whether gender differences in apology behavior exist and, if so, why. In Study 1, participants reported in daily diaries all offenses they committed or experienced and whether an apology had been offered. Women reported offering more apologies than men, but they also reported committing more offenses. There was no gender difference in the proportion of offenses that prompted apologies. This finding suggests that men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior. In Study 2, we tested this threshold hypothesis by asking participants to evaluate both imaginary and recalled offenses. As predicted, men rated the offenses as less severe than women did. These different ratings of severity predicted both judgments of whether an apology was deserved and actual apology behavior.
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A Negativity Gap? Voter Gender, Attack Politics, and Participation in American Elections
Deborah Jordan Brooks
Politics & Gender, September 2010, Pages 319-341
Abstract:
The effect of negative campaigning on voter turnout has been a major focus of research in recent years. The general finding from this large literature is that negative campaigning does not depress voter turnout overall; however, it may still be that certain portions of the electorate are differentially mobilized or demobilized by negativity. In particular, scholars have neglected to examine whether men and women react differently to campaign attacks. This article begins by showing that evidence drawn from a variety of relevant fields outside of political science point toward the general expectation that men will be mobilized by negativity to a greater degree than women. Associated hypotheses are then tested using data from both real campaigns and experiments. In each analysis, the evidence supports the hypothesis that a "negativity gap" exists. Specifically, men are disproportionately mobilized by the most negative campaign messages as compared to women. Partisanship is also found to interact significantly with gender and message tone to affect the likelihood of voting. These results highlight the importance of studying subgroup differences when establishing the effects of campaign tone on the public.
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Performance Evaluations as Gender Barriers in Professional Organizations: A Study of Auditing Firms
Karin Jonnergård, Anna Stafsudd & Ulf Elg
Gender, Work & Organization, November 2010, Pages 721-747
Abstract:
Gendering processes often take the form of organizational subtexts, that is, seemingly gender-neutral practices that have gender implications. The purpose of this article is to study performance evaluations, which, based on management by objectives systems, may appear neutral, but tend to be based on male norms of what is regarded as good performance. We analysed the careers and performance evaluations of 391 newly licenced Swedish auditors, using an open-ended question survey. In this industry 50 per cent of new employees and 92 per cent of partners are men. Even in the early stages of their careers, there are notable differences between women and men. The women achieved less and show lower career ambitions and expectations as well as greater intentions to leave the auditing industry. Performance evaluations are also perceived differently, men focusing on what is evaluated (reflecting the perceptions of those at higher hierarchical levels) and women focusing on who does the evaluating and how.
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Martin Kornberger, Chris Carter & Anne Ross-Smith
Accounting, Organizations and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
Traditionally, accounting has been described as a gendered profession. Recently, accounting firms, and especially the Big Four, have made very public commitments to promote greater gender equality. Yet they struggle to retain women, especially at more senior levels. Drawing on a recent empirical field study of managers in one of the Big Four accounting firms (pseudonym Sky Accounting), we explore the effects of a flexible work initiative that was developed with the aim of creating "the best professional workplace for women". The paper addresses the flexibility program as a key organizational practice that was specifically designed to enhance the progression and retention of talented women at senior levels. We show how the initiative that was designed to challenge the status quo was, in practice, translated into a mechanism that actually reinforced gender barriers. In order to theorize our findings, we draw on contemporary theoretical approaches to gender from both accounting and organization theory and suggest several critical reflections on the dynamics of bringing about change in relation to gender inequality.
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The Shifting Supply of Men and Women to Occupations: Feminization in Veterinary Education
Anne Lincoln
Social Forces, July 2010, Pages 1969-1998
Abstract:
A confining limitation for the occupational sex segregation literature has been the inability to determine how many persons of one sex would have entered an occupation had the other sex not successfully entered instead. Using panel data from all American colleges of veterinary medicine (1976-1995), a fixed-effects model with lagged independent variables finds support for the concurrent effects of many hypothesized feminization mechanisms. Declining relative earnings and policies aimed at increasing production of graduates affect applications from men and women similarly, but feminization is driven by the decline in men's college graduation and their avoidance of fields dominated by women. The findings demonstrate the relative contributions and interdependence of supply and demand to occupational sex composition and the job search process more broadly.
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Money isn't everything: Wives' earnings and housework time
Alexandra Killewald & Margaret Gough
Social Science Research, November 2010, Pages 987-1003
Abstract:
The autonomy perspective of housework time predicts that wives' housework time falls steadily as their earnings rise, because wives use additional financial resources to outsource or forego time in housework. We argue, however, that wives' ability to reduce their housework varies by household task. That is, we expect that increases in wives' earnings will allow them to forego or outsource some tasks, but not others. As a result, we hypothesize more rapid declines in wives' housework time for low-earning wives as their earnings increase than for high-earning wives who have already stopped performing household tasks that are the easiest and cheapest to outsource or forego. Using fixed-effects models and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find considerable support for our hypothesis. We further conclude that past evidence that wives who out-earn their husbands spend additional time in housework to compensate for their gender-deviant success in the labor market is due to the failure to account for the non-linear relationship between wives' absolute earnings and their housework time.
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Gender and Public Attitudes toward Corruption and Tax Evasion
Benno Torgler & Neven Valev
Contemporary Economic Policy, October 2010, Pages 554-568
Abstract:
The topics of corruption and tax evasion have attracted significant attention in the literature in recent years. We build on that literature by investigating empirically: (1) whether attitudes toward corruption and tax evasion vary systematically with gender and (2) whether gender differences decline as men and women face similar opportunities for illicit behavior. We use data on eight Western European countries from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey. The results reveal significantly greater aversion to corruption and tax evasion among women. This holds across countries and time, and across numerous empirical specifications.
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The impact of blatant stereotype activation and group sex-composition on female leaders
Crystal Hoyt, Stefanie Johnson, Susan Elaine Murphy & Kerri Hogue Skinnell
Leadership Quarterly, October 2010, Pages 716-732
Abstract:
The individual and combined impact of blatant stereotype activation and solo status or mixed-sex groups on the self-appraisals, performance, and anxiety of female leaders was examined across three laboratory studies. The first study utilized a two-condition, two-stage design in which female leaders were exposed to a blatant stereotype threat or control condition after which they completed a leadership task. In the second stage, the threatened leaders received a solo status manipulation (leading a group of men) while the control condition did not. In the second study a 2 (blatant threat, no blatant threat) by 2 (solo status, all-female group) fully factorial design was used to test the hypotheses. Finally, in Study 3, a similar factorial design was used with a mixed-sex, rather than solo, condition. Across the studies it was hypothesized and found that receiving a single stereotype threat would result in a positive, stereotype reactance, response. However, when both threats were combined a stereotype vulnerability response was elicited, as expected. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Real Men Don't Eat Quiche: Regulation of Gender-Expressive Choices by Men
David Gal & James Wilkie
Social Psychological and Personality Science, October 2010, Pages 291-301
Abstract:
Everyday items are imbued with subtle yet pervasive gender associations. For instance, sour dairy products and products with rounded edges tend to be perceived as relatively feminine, whereas meat and products with sharp edges tend to be perceived as relatively masculine. In a series of studies, we find that men are more likely to choose gender-congruent options (masculine foods and angular-shaped items) when they have unconstrained time and attentional resources than when these resources are constrained. In contrast, women's choices tend to not be affected by time or attentional resource availability. Our findings suggest that men experience a conflict between their relatively intrinsic preferences and gender norms and that they tend to forgo their intrinsic preferences to conform to a masculine gender identity (when they have sufficient resources to incorporate gender norm information in their choices). Women, on the other hand, appear to be less concerned with making gender-congruent choices.
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Stability and Change in the Division of Labor among Cohabiting Couples
Amanda Miller & Sharon Sassler
Sociological Forum, December 2010, Pages 677-702
Abstract:
Because cohabitors express preferences for egalitarian relationships, it is generally presumed (by researchers and the popular press) that cohabiting couples engage in fairly equitable exchanges of domestic and paid work. This article explores how some cohabiting couples "do gender" through the division of labor-both paid and domestic work. Data are from in-depth interviews with both partners from 30 cohabiting couples (N = 60) who have moderate levels of education. Few of these couples began their relationships sharing both paid work and domestic labor equally. Furthermore, the number of couples engaged in equal exchanges declined over time, while those relying on conventional exchanges grew. The devalued nature of domestic work, the persistence of gender privilege, and the "stalled" revolution are evident in how these working-class cohabiting couples arrange their divisions of labor, reasons for changes, and why women are less able than men to opt out of housework.
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Do Animated Disney Characters Portray and Promote the Beauty-Goodness Stereotype?
Doris Bazzini, Lisa Curtin, Serena Joslin, Shilpa Regan & Denise Martz
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, October 2010, Pages 2687-2709
Abstract:
Disney movies are frequently cited as a source of the what-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype. Two studies (a) assessed prevalence of the stereotype across animated Disney movies; and (b) examined whether exposure to such films influences children's judgments of peers. In Study 1, human characters in 21 films were rated on attractiveness, goodness, and character outcome. Regression analyses demonstrated that attractiveness of a character was a significant predictor of the character's portrayal. In the second study, 42 children (ages 6-12) were exposed to either a high or low beauty-biased film and then rated target peers. Children rated the attractive target more favorably than the less attractive target. However, film exposure did not increase children's use of the stereotype.